First time home buyer check list part one

What can you afford for a house payment?

As a Metro Detroit home buyer the first thing you should absolutely do is to sit down and figure out your budget. What can you truly afford a month in payments? What won't make you house poor? What can you afford to pay and still be able to live good? As a first time home buyer you need to have a little left over each month after you pay the bills. You need to be able to pay for a furnace, or a new water heater, or a new dishwasher if it breaks. Things break and you need to be able to afford them. So sit down and figure out yourself what you are comfortable with for a monthly payment.

Don't let money and a huge house payment ruin your life.

Then the second step is to gather up these items and go to a bank, a lender, or a mortgage broker.

• latest 2 paystubs
• latest 2 years W-2 and tax returns
• last 2 months banks statements
• Any asset statements for stocks, 401K, IRA, or mutual fund

Sit down with a mortgage lender and figure out what loan program works best for you. And then fiqure out what price of a home you can afford based on the amount of payment you feel comfortable with. Most times a lender will approve you for a bigger loan payment than you want. So it is up to you to be smart about what you can truly afford. There are too many people that are losing their homes because they went overboard and over spent.

So be one of the smart ones. And don't over stretch yourself with a large payment.

The mortgage lender will give you a pre-approval letter so the seller and the sellers agent will know that your mortgage will most likely go through.

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Russ Ravary just your local Metro Detroit real estate agent